


Under the Orange Neon

by alamorn



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017)
Genre: Dream Sex, F/F, Ghosts, Haunting, Identity Issues, Some light possession, and also less pleasant dream stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 06:14:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20943656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/pseuds/alamorn
Summary: In the space after Berlin and before her next mission, the woman who had been Lorraine Broughton for the past twelve years did not sleep well. Don't misunderstand: this was not due to guilt, and to suggest it was would be to insult her.





	Under the Orange Neon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/gifts).

In the space after Berlin and before her next mission, the woman who had been Lorraine Broughton for the past twelve years did not sleep well. Don't misunderstand: this was not due to guilt, and to suggest it was would be to insult her. The woman who had been Lorraine had excised guilt decades previous, the way a surgeon would excise a tumor, taking with it a margin of healthy flesh.

No, it was not due to guilt. 

Largely, it was due to pain. Berlin had been hard on her body, and she had not been kind to herself before that. _Lorraine_ had been pummeled, beaten, frozen, betrayed. Satchel had as well. And before Lorraine, it had been Ruth, and before Ruth, Kate. Her name now matched her birth certificate, but she hadn't seen that in years, and she'd taken so many blows to the head that sometimes she forgot. Who was she supposed to be, now that she didn't have a role? Who was going to tell her?

The government would, eventually, but she wasn't needed at the moment, all her covers burned. Berlin had been the last great shitshow for a generation of spies and she wasn't sure yet if she was one of them. It was uneasy. It didn't help her sleep.

And the dreams didn't help, either.

She'd had bad dreams before, of course, had night terrors and sleep paralysis, and the sort of haunting nightmare that followed you into the waking world, dead friends at the bar with her, dead lovers in her bed, waiting for her to turn down the sheets. They were worse this time, somehow.

Delphine had gotten under her skin, and she hadn't allowed her death to stop her from following the woman who used to be Lorraine home.

Delphine lounged in her bed, ligature marks vivid across her throat, arms limp and legs twisted. In real life, the struggle had not left her beautiful. In real life, Lorraine had collapsed for a moment, a longer moment than she could afford. Percival had killed Delphine for the threat she posed him and nearly taken out both of his rivals at once. It would have been a master stroke, if it had worked.

In her dreams, she was Lorraine again. In her dreams, Delphine was splayed across her bed, naked, strangled. In her dreams, Lorraine did not collapse, but crawled atop the body, slid a leg between still, slack thighs, pressed her mouth the vivid marks. In her dreams, when Lorraine fucked her, she came to life again, mewled and writhed and hissed in her ear.

In life, Delphine had told her Percival's secrets. In death, she told her more.

"I'll never leave you," Delphine promised, threatened, her eyes filmed and dull. Lorraine slid her fingers deep inside. Inside, Delphine was hot, alive, pulsing with blood. Lorraine could feel Delphine's heartbeat in her cunt.

"What makes you so special?" Lorraine asked, languid, curious, trying to hurt. She'd never done anything for just one reason and she wasn't about to start now, when she was going mad, or being haunted, or whatever was happening here. She was aware, she was lucid. This was a dream, and an uncomfortable one, and one she didn't want to wake from.

When Delphine laughed, her eyes were alive, dark and cheerful, crinkled at the corners. Her teeth showed through the translucency of her cheeks. Lorraine -- Satchel -- no, neither of those. Ruth? Kate? Who had she been when she'd first had this thought, that women would always be better at death, that men could only pretend at it? Women were better at killing. Women were better at dying. Delphine had proved this as well as Lorraine had. Delphine had been a corpse in waiting when she lived. Dead, she was more alive than any man.

"Why can't you let me go?" Delphine asked. "Are you getting old, my love?"

Here, in her dreams, in the arms of a ghost, she could be honest. "Yes," she said, and Delphine was atop her, pinning her hands to the bed, dark hair hanging down around them, closing them off from everything. There was only Lorraine, and her pain, and Delphine, who was no small part of that.

"No," Delphine crooned. "No, you don't get to. You must be immortal. I was not getting old, and I died."

Delphine's hands were shackles and Delphine was across the room, Lorraine's hotel room from Berlin, lit by neon streetlights, the cold settling through the air. Delphine leaned against the window, and Lorraine could see her bones through her skin. "Vengeance is not enough," Delphine said, staring out at Berlin. Lorraine could see the Wall through her window, towering, crushing the city with its weight. "Vengeance has never been enough."

"What do you want?" Lorraine asked. It was all she had ever asked. It was the spy's only question. What do you want? What are you willing to give up to get it?

"I want to live, of course," Delphine said.

This time, when Delphine kissed her, she sank through Lorraine. There had always been room for more, and Delphine took it easily. The woman who had been Lorraine did not resist; after all, she had been waiting for someone to tell her who to be.


End file.
